Blossoms in the Wind
Blossoms in the Wind
副标题: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze
ISBN: 9780451218520
出版社: NAL Trade
出版年: 2006-6-27
页数: 448
定价: USD 16.00
装帧: Paperback
内容简介
“神风敢死队”又称为“神风特攻队”是在第二次世界大战末期日本在中途岛失败后，为了抵御美国空军强大的优势，挽救其战败的局面，利用日本人的武士道精神，按照“一人、一机、一弹换一舰”的要求，对美国舰艇编队、登陆部队及固定的集群目标实施的自杀式袭击的敢死队。
在1944年10月25日神风队在莱特湾海战中击沈圣罗号战舰证明这种战术能给敌军造成严重损失之后，日本海军在冲绳战役期间大肆使用这种自杀式袭击战术。根据《美国战略轰炸调查总结报告》(太平洋战争部分)，从1944年10月到1945年6月冲绳战役，日本一共发动了2550次神风攻击行动。
原版图书《神风敢死队》为您再现那段历史！
Book Description
A compelling chronicle of men whose greatest desire was to die as warriors-and the legacy that still haunts those whose destinies were never fulfilled.
In the last days of World War II, the Japanese unleashed a new breed of warrior-the Kamikaze, idealistic young men who believed there could be no greater glory than to sacrifice their lives in suicide attacks to defend their homeland. But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die-and lived? Soon after 9/11, ethnographer M.G. Sheftall was given unprecedented access to the cloistered community of Japan's last remaining Kamikaze corps survivors. The result is a poignant and unforgettable glimpse into the lives and mindsets of former Kamikaze pilots who never completed their final missions.
From Publishers Weekly
An independent scholar, long a resident of Japan, has produced a superior addition to the literature on Japan's tokko, or suicide, warriors. Suicidal missions—in the air (both conventional aircraft and the ineffective Ohka guided bomb) and at sea (the even less effective Kaiten manned torpedo)—had been under development during much of WWII, but the large-scale operations were launched in defense of the Philippines in October 1944. Thanks to unparalleled access to the surviving tokko personnel and a gift for characterization worthy of a first-rank novelist, the author gives us an extraordinary range of humanity, including Toshio Yoshitake, who flew obsolete attack planes all over the Philippines; Tokuro Takei, who became a suicide pilot while a teenager; and Iwao Fukagawa, holding his father's hand in farewell—as well as tokko founding father Adm. Onishi Takijirou. The author's description of the right-wing Japanese politics surrounding this part of WWII history and the resentment of many Japanese at comparisons of 9/11 to the tokko missions may raise eyebrows, but the book is remarkably evenhanded as to the vexed question of war guilt, and enormously rewarding if read carefully. (July)
From Booklist
Independent scholar Sheftall, American by birth and education but a longtime resident in Japan, adds a well-written study of the Japanese suicide warriors to the World War II literature. In the autumn of 1944, Japan was running out of soldiers, supplies, and occupied territory and was facing the conquest of Japan itself. In a last effort to discourage attack and invasion, the high command sent out the kamikaze. These suicide warriors were to be human incarnations of the Divine Wind that legendarily had saved the home islands from invasion in centuries past. Sheftall's outstanding account of this policy's design, training, and execution includes interviews with the families of dead pilots and, harder to reach, pilots who survived the missions. Since 9/11, interest in the mindset of suicide pilots has increased exponentially. Sheftall and those he interviewed want it known that the Japanese kamikaze were the product of a particular time, place, and culture, and that erroneous analogies to contemporary terrorists will only confuse anyone seeking to understand either type of suicidal flier.
Roland Green
Book Dimension
length: (cm)22.8 width:(cm)15.2